Challenge

The third practice of ending well is to acknowledge the people and situations that challenged us to grow this past year.  

A challenge is the stimulation that comes from a test of the heart, intellect or will. Its purpose on a journey of meaning is four-fold:

• to call forward our personal power

• to fund new resources

• to teach us how to apply these powers and resources

• and to expose that which requires strengthening.

When we meet a challenge and overcome it, we have empirical evidence that our spirit has grown and that we have learned something new about ourselves, other people or what is possible in our journey to Destiny. When we fall short of our goals or expectations, we discover what needs strengthening or what changes are required for forward progress. The knowledge that comes from failure, applied to the next attempt, creates progress.

Successes and failures that come from challenges are part of Destiny's plan for each of us. As such, we honor the gift of learning and growth by recognizing these lessons daily.

At year's end, however, we have a unique opportunity to remember that personal power  and progress are a result of full engagement with life.

Who or what has challenged you to grow in 2009?

How did you meet these challenges?

When a breakthrough occurred, what changed in your nature, relationships or circumstances?

How did you respond to breakdown or failure?

To whom do you owe a debt of thanks for helping you grow into your best self?

As our original medicine develops, we become potent creative forces in the world. We begin to see that the idea of what a human being can achieve and the reality of what is possible are often far apart. We are far more creatively potent than we know, a truth that is revealed from a challenge.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.